


Error Report

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: Wire and Code [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 19:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Finrod is back.Sort of.





	Error Report

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> Writing this took longer than I thought, but I have more free time now, and I have a list of Silm fics I want to write that I'm really excited about. Let the summer fic writing begin!

“I understand your concerns,” Finarfin said. He _shared_ most of those concerns. He still had nightmares of that night that he’d walked in to see his family’s creations covered in blood. There was a reason that he hadn’t protested when the Valar had insisted on retiring every last ‘droid that’d had their non-violence programming deactivated when they could have simply been reprogrammed; there was a reason he’d avoided his actual product for so long even as he carefully built back the family business. He understood.

But this was Findarato, and even after all that had happened, he couldn’t quite manage to be afraid of him.

And, of what should be of more importance to the Valar, this was the first ‘droid that they had access to the memory dump of. The others that had fallen had either been too damaged or not ones that Finarfin had access to. This was their first and best chance to understand what was going on over there.

“I’m not suggesting that we put him in an unrestrained shell and hand him a weapon. But he’s the first high-level android we’ve got whose memory dump hasn’t been entirely destroyed. He’s our best chance for understanding what’s going on in Beleriand, and after trying to sort through the data for weeks, I’m telling you, we’re either going to have to download him into a body of some sort and let him talk, or we’re going to be here for years. Between the updates he somehow got and the damage he suffered, nearly everything I’m seeing is virtually unreadable.”

“I will report this to the others,” Eonwe said after a long silence. “I will return with their answer.”

 

The decision took two weeks. The Valar had a whole list of specifications for Findarato’s new body, all designed to prevent any possibility of him causing the slightest harm to anyone. The end result looked nothing like an elf. It was a simple, tear drop shaped speaker containing a dowloaded copy of the android’s personality chip and memory banks.

No weapons. No hands. Not even any visual ability. It could hear and speak but that was all.

The personality, however, had been left as intact as the damage would let it be, which Finarfin realized might have been a mistake when he took a deep breath and turned the device on with shaking hands.

“Where am I?” Findarato’s familiar voice asked in a tone of barely restrained panic. “Beren? Beren, are you alright? I’ve lost visual. Did I stop it in time? Beren, answer me!”

“You’re on Aman,” Finarfin broke in. “It’s me, Findarato. And Eonwe,” he tacked on after a moment. The Valar’s representative was watching the scene impassively.

“Findarato,” the device said slowly. “No one’s used that designation for a long time. But you’re going to have to do better than a stolen audio file and an old designation if you expect me to believe you, Sauron.”

“It’s me, it’s Finarfin,” he insisted. He rattled off the command code quickly. “And what do you mean, old designation?”

The device was silent for a lot longer this time. “If you’ve hacked far enough into my systems to retrieve that number, you should know my new designation by now,” Findarato finally reasoned. “I go by Finrod now.”

Finrod, he repeated to himself silently. The rest of that statement stole his attention quickly. “Sauron was hacking your systems?”

“When he wasn’t ripping my hardware apart. He still can’t quite echo Noldorin craftsmanship. He hasn’t even learned the secret yet.” The laughter that followed lacked its usual warmth. Something had corrupted the audio, causing it to skip over several seconds and static to haunt the rest. “Or should I say you haven’t? Is that you, Sauron, or did you send someone else in? And what happened to Beren?”

A desperate glance at Eonwe proved him unwilling to interfere. Finarfin felt about ready to tear his hair out. “I don’t even know who Beren is!” He wracked his brain for anything that could possibly convince his wayward creation. “The secret,” he realized. “You said Sauron didn’t even know the secret. You meant the secret of how you’re so realistic, right? How you’re so alive?”

“Yes,” Findarato - Finrod said cautiously.

“It’s the Silmarils,” he said triumphantly. “I don’t know how, I don’t think even Feanor knows that, but it’s them somehow, whether through science or magic or both.” Morgoth may have taken them, but apparently he hadn’t figured out how to make them work - or if he had, he hadn’t shared the information.

“Oh.” Finrod sounded stunned. “This is - this is real. I - There’s a memory glitch. I experienced critical systems failure. I must have overextended myself. If Sauron caught me - He must have. I hacked into his little workshop’s network while he was busy hacking into me,” he explained. “I managed to use it to activate the self-destruct on a creation of his he sent after Beren.” He paused. “I think. That’s where my memory ends. The download must have taken place automatically. If I’ve been downloaded again, why am I not at full functionality?”

Eonwe chose then to speak up. “It was deemed unwise.”

“I can’t move at all. What kind of body can’t move?”

“One that is good enough for our purposes,” Eonwe said implacably. “Report.”

Finrod’s voice was perfectly, robotically bland when he answered, and Finarfin winced. It was never a good sign when any of his creations did that.

“Beren came to the Nargothrond requesting aid in retrieving a Silmaril, so that he might gain favor with King Thingol and be allowed to marry his daughter.”

“And where was the Nargothrond?” Finarfin asked, pulling up a rough map of Beleriand on a nearby screen.

“Location was automatically deleted upon capture to protect inhabitants,” Finrod reported. “The location was deemed priority one confidential information after it left the fleet, following a primary directive.”

“What primary directive?” Finarfin demanded.

“Orders from an Aman planetary authority.”

For the first time, Eonwe looked startled. “What?”

“One of the Valar contacted the units designated Finrod, self, and the cousin-unit Turgon with information useful to surviving the war.”

Finarfin turned on Eonwe. “You said you washed your hands of this! And now the Valar have been interfering with the androids?”

“That was not our consensus. Which Valar?” Eonwe asked hotly.

“Information was deemed priority one confidential,” Finrod said. A faint hint of gleeful smugness had entered his voice. “It was deleted upon capture.”

Of course it was.

“Who was Beren, and why did he come to you for help?” Finarfin tried.

Finrod became much more cheerful. “Beren: human male, descendant of Barahir. Priority two individual due to his father’s actions in the war and his own heroism for the war effort. In the absence of higher authority, his needs had to be met.”

“What about Fingolfin and Feanor? Did they not count as higher authority?”

The voice was silent for so long that Finarfin was afraid the device had somehow run through all its power already.

“I’m the first to report back,” Finrod realized. “You don’t know.”

A chill was creeping down Finarfin’s spine. “Know what?”

Finrod’s voice had lost every trace of robotics. Instead, it was impossibly soft and full of grief. “We failed. We tried so hard, but we failed the primary purpose you gave us. We could not protect them. Not any of them.”

Finarfin stared at the little black device and refused to believe.

“Their armies remain, and the Sindar, the dwarves, and the Men fight on,” Finrod said softly, “but there were so few of the Noldor that came.”

No. No, no, no.

“There are no Noldorin survivors in Beleriand.”

 

It was a full day before he could return for the rest of the report.

Apparently Thingol wanted the Silmarils for his own experiments. May it do him as much good as they had done everyone else. The Feanorian androids’ OATH programming hadn’t liked that, apparently, since their creator had prioritized the retrieval of those critical inventions. The Feanorians’ had stirred up the more dronelike ‘droids against Finrod, and the more advanced units of Orodreth, Finduilas, and Gil-Galad had been less certain but ultimately failed to stand in their way. Only a few other androids had followed Finrod and Beren on their quest.

“Orodreth being … “

“Made by Angarato,” Finrod reported promptly. “He hasn’t seen a Silmaril yet, though, so he’s still incomplete. So is Finduilas, who he made on his own.”

“And Gil-Galad?”

Finrod’s voice was entirely too cheerful as he said the now all too familiar, “That information was priority one confidential.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“That information was also priority one - “

“Never mind.” He sighed. 

He was alone this time. Technically, Eonwe was supposed to be present whenever Finrod was powered on, but Finarfin hadn’t particularly cared to wait, and he was beyond doubtful of both Finrod’s ability and desire to wreak any damage in his current state.

Someday his nightmares of what his creations had done would probably return. In the meantime, they had been replaced by nightmares of the wasteland Beleriand was rapidly turning into.

A wasteland that held both his brother’s graves.

He rubbed at a rapidly growing headache. He understood why Feanor had been so determined to retrieve the Silmarils, but that programming he’d given his creations could cause problems if it brought them into conflict with the other ‘droids again - or, worse, Thingol.

It would be fine, he told himself. There wouldn’t be another Alqualondë. There couldn’t be.

Everything would be fine.

 

Findekano, who was apparently designated Fingon now, was destroyed in the largest battle yet fought for Beleriand. His memory dump was sorted through as best as anyone could manage, but the Valar flatly refused to allow him any sort of body. Given that they still hadn’t allowed Finrod a moving body, or even one with visuals, Finarfin wasn’t surprised.

Actually, Finrod still wasn’t technically even supposed to be powered on unless a Valar was present, but Finarfin was still mostly ignoring that directive.

Finrod was his and Earwen’s, no one else’s. It did no one any harm to let them hear his voice.

 

After so many years of the Feanorian androids’ seeming invulnerability, Finarfin was stunned to get a message from Nerdanel that three had performed memory dumps in one day.

Celegorm, Caranthir, and Curufin, all gone.

They had not, at least, attacked Thingol. Thingol was apparently already dead at other hands. No, instead they’d attacked his heir.

People’s blood was once again on steel plated hands, his brother’s programming once again gone horrifically wrong.

Finrod’s weight in his pocket suddenly felt like a small mountain dragging him down.

Nerdanel didn’t even try to ask the Valar for permission to rebuild the creations she had once called her children. It was good she didn’t; the Valar’s immediate order once the memory dump was understood was that the three androids’ data be wiped entirely, condemned forever to the void of deletion.

Nerdanel nodded, pale faced, eyes still locked on the screen. It showed an image she’d managed to retrieve from one of them. One last picture of her husband.

It disappeared with all the rest when she ordered the computer to wipe it all in a clear, strong voice that never wavered.

That lack of hesitance might have been because of the three data sticks Finarfin could have sworn he glimpsed her slip into her pocket. The sort of data sticks that might, conceivably, hold the personality chips and memory banks of three particular androids.

But he couldn’t be certain, of course, and he had his own secret in his pocket, so he headed back to his office to drop his head in his hands and do his best not to weep.


End file.
